For over half a century, store-and-forward Electrical Packet Switching (EPS) with Layer 3 routing has been regarded as an efficient solution for relatively low-to-medium high-speed data transmission (≦1 Gb/s). However, the proliferation of bandwidth-intensive applications such as high-definition (HD) video streaming, large file transfer and high-speed data transmission (many Gbps) have been challenging the internet protocol (IP) routing overhead and EPS throughput. Optical Flow Switching (OFS) has been proposed as an efficient alternative to packet switching. OFS uses dedicated lightpaths and bypasses IP routers to enable efficient end-to-end optical communication for high volume transmission. For general information regarding OFS, reference may be made to Chan, V. W. S “Optical Flow Switching Networks,” Proc. IEEE, 100(5), 1079-1091 (2012), which is fully incorporated by reference herein. These and other matters have presented challenges to data transmissions, for a variety of applications.